Luathas Mass 05/11/2026 - The Spark of Curiosity and What Moves Our Feet: On Motivation in Relation to Learning

 

Greetings Aislings, and welcome to the Luathas Temple.
My name is Iglis Viriou, and I am the Priest leading
today's mass worship of Luathas. I am glad you have all
taken the time to gather here with me. Today I would
like to speak on something a little more personal, a
little more inward, than the history lessons and
explorations I have brought to you before. Today I
would like to speak on motivation. Specifically, on
what it means in the context of learning, and how it
relates to the domain of our god, Luathas.
I want you to consider something. Every tome in this
temple, every scroll, every word carved into the walls
of Rucesion, every piece of knowledge that exists
within Temuair and Medenia... was put there by someone
who was motivated enough to put it there. The wizards
who documented the properties of their spells, the
priests who recorded the lives of their gods, the
mundanes who wrote down the histories of their towns
and their suffering... all of it required someone to
decide, first, that it mattered. That it was worth
doing.
This is where I think many Aislings stumble when they
approach knowledge as a value. We speak often of
curiosity. I myself have spoken of it before, and I
will speak of it again. But curiosity is not the same
thing as motivation. Curiosity is the spark. It is the
moment you glance at the fog behind Tagor and think,
I wonder what is back there. Motivation is what
moves your feet. It is what makes you walk into the
fog. You can be curious about something for a great
many Deoches and never truly learn it, because
curiosity without the will to act upon it will sit
quietly inside you, and nothing more.
So the question I want to raise is this. What is it
that motivates us to learn? And is the source of that
motivation something we should examine?
I believe there are two broad wells from which
motivation to learn can be drawn. The first is
external.
You learn because something requires it of you. Because
a guild or a fellowship expects it of you, because
advancement demands it, because someone you respect has
told you it is important. This is not inherently a bad
thing. Many of us came to our paths precisely because
someone else lit the way first. I would not be standing
here if I had not once followed the words of those who
came before me. External motivation is a valid and
useful thing. But it is fragile. When the expectation
is gone, when the guild disbands or the mentor departs
or the requirement is fulfilled... the learning tends
to stop with it. You have gained what was needed of
you,
and nothing more.
The second well is internal. You learn because
something
inside you demands it. Because there is a question that
will not leave you alone. Because you walked past a
door
and could not stop thinking about what was on the other
side. This is the well that Luathas most delights in, I
think. Not because it makes you more productive or more
capable, though it often does, but because it is the
closest thing to pure gnosis that we are capable of as
mortal Aislings. To want to know simply because you
want to know. That is a sacred thing.
But I want to be careful here, because I do not want to
leave you with the impression that internal motivation
is something you either have or you do not. I have met
many Aislings who felt that they were simply not the
type to be deeply curious, not the type to be scholars
or seekers. And I want to say plainly that I do not
think that is a fixed truth about any person.
Motivation
can be cultivated. It can be tended like a garden. The
way you cultivate it is by giving yourself permission
to follow small curiosities even when they seem
unimportant. Even when others find them tedious.
Eingren Manor was considered a tiresome and unrewarding
venture by most when I first began poking around in its
halls. And in fairness to that view, it is a labyrinth
that does not give up its secrets easily. But the act
of wandering those halls, of asking questions about
what had happened there and who Shila truly was,
fed something in me. And that something, once fed, grew
hungry for more. That is how internal motivation works.
It does not arrive fully formed one morning. It grows.
You have to feed it small things until it is strong
enough to carry you toward the larger ones.
The danger, then, is not a lack of curiosity or
motivation. The danger is in smothering what small
flames exist before they can grow. This happens when
we judge the subject of our curiosity too quickly.
When we say, that is not worth knowing, that does not
matter, no one else cares about that. Luathas does
not give us a list of subjects that are worthy of
pursuit. The god of knowledge does not look at your
interests and decide whether they are sufficiently
grand. Every question pursued honestly is an act of
devotion to this temple.
I will leave you with this. When you find yourself
standing at the edge of something you do not
understand,
whether it is an unexplored part of our world, a piece
of lore you have not read, a craft you have never
tried,
a question that has been sitting quietly in the back of
your mind... I want you to ask yourself what is
stopping you from walking toward it. If the answer is
that no one is asking you to, that there is no reward
waiting at the end, that others would not understand
why you bother... then I would gently suggest that
those are the exact reasons Luathas would want you to
walk toward it anyway.
Knowledge sought for its own sake is the deepest
expression of what it means to carry the spark of an
Aisling. And motivation, properly cultivated, is the
flame that keeps that spark alive..